The latest assault on disabled people’s benefits

Last month Esther McVey, our new Minister “for” Disabled People, published the draft regulations that set out the qualifying rules for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) which is to replace Disability Living Allowance (DLA). These new rules will lead to 960,000 fewer people getting help with the extra costs of coping with disability and 400,000 fewer will qualify for an adapted car from the Motability scheme. More than 5,000 jobs in the car industry could be threatened.

By 2018, existing claimants of DLA will have been re-assessed and transferred to PIP. It’s important to acknowledge that some people will be better off: the Department for Work and Pensions’ revised impact assessment says that, of 1.75 million people who will be re-assessed, 510,000 will be better off and the awards of a further 270,000 will be unchanged. But the government’s objective of cutting spending on DLA by more than £1 billion has been clear since the 2010 Budget: 510,000 will be worse off and 450,000 people will lose all entitlement.

The government’s defence of this decision is that the people who will lose out have less severe impairments and so don’t need their benefits as much. In fact, as the TUC argued in 2011, you cannot read off a disabled person’s extra costs from a diagnosis of the severity of their impairment. Governments don’t like asking how much the extra costs of disability actually are, but the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys carried out a highly-regarded investigation into this question in the mid-1980s. They found that even people in the lowest severity category faced extra costs (about £3 a week) and there were large minorities with much higher costs. There were:

30,000 people paying more than £50 a week;

70,000 people paying £30-£50 a week;

190,000 people paying £20-£30 a week;

840,000 people paying £10-£20 a week.

Prices are now about two-and-a-half times as high as they were then.

The best example of this problem – and the one causing most anger amongst disabled people – is the much tougher rules there will be for the enhanced mobility component. You need to get this to qualify for help with an adapted vehicle from Motability. We Are Spartacus has an excellent post about this – the main difference is that, under the existing rules, you qualify if you cannot walk 50 metres or more. The new PIP rules reduce this to 20 metres.

The government’s assessment recognises that, by 2018, 602,000 disabled people will have the level of PIP that qualifies them for Motability: 428,000 fewer than if DLA had been retained. People will find it harder to visit friends and family, go shopping or go out for a meal or to the cinema; thousands will have to give up their jobs. Worryingly, it is not clear what will happen to people whose eligibility ends before their Motability leases and hire purchase agreements.

It isn’t only disabled people who will be affected. A report published last summer, Reversing from Recovery, reported that as many as ten per cent of all new car sales in the UK are through Motability. Revised figures taking the new rules into account suggest that the car industry could lose 50,000 sales a year, threatening 5,500 jobs.

I marked the International Day of Disabled People last month by noting the attacks the current government has launched on disabled people, including the closure of Remploy factories, the abolition of equality impact assessments, the closure of the Independent Living Funds, cuts in social care, cuts in Employment and Support Allowance and cuts in Universal Credit. I should also have added the “bedroom tax”: the cut in Housing Benefit for disabled people who need an extra room for overnight carers, and now we have to add this huge cut in Personal Independence Payment.

Raise this at your next branch meeting – contact me [[email protected]] for help getting a speaker.

Written by Richard Exell

I am the TUC’s Senior Policy Officer covering social security, tax credits and labour market issues, including the debates about the European social model and labour market flexibility. I also represent the TUC on the Industrial Injuries Advisory C…

5 Responses to The latest assault on disabled people’s benefits

The people who are assessed as not needing PIP EM (Personal Independence Payment Enhanced Mobility Component) with a current Motability lease hire car will be offered finance by (organised by the car manufacturers and the government’s friends the Banks) to buy their cars. Wronga.con

It is amazing how a reassessment can be carried out when the amount of money to be saved is known in advance. This government’s relentless attack on the disabled should be a far greater scandal than it is. Please sign & share #WOWpetition to resist. http://wowpetition.com

It is truly unbelievable disabled people living independently in this Big Society England are currently under such scrutiny, Information is known and processed by the DWP and suporting evidence given, for current claims,This is now being totally disregarded and more information is being asked to be provided.conclusive of unpopular bureacracy and loss of many tory votes, Toochey

[…] of the government’s welfare reforms are still being dissected by the frontline blogosphere. Richard Exell described the impact of the introduction of the new Personal Independence Payment following the […]

Re the bedroom tax.My reading of the situation is that you are “allowed” a room for non-resident carers,others you are subject to a charge.Only by appealing for a discretionary payments may this be alleviated.I read a recent case where a person was contemplating having home haemodialysis (and therefore saving the State far more than three weekly visits for lifesaving treatment)For this(we happen to do this,fortunately not being in Council/Housing Association property are not effected)you need a separate room for the purpose.In effect getting charged for saving the State and receiving treatment in the manner you want-beyond parody and sickening.Any claims that discretionary payments may alleviate this,is not for me the point,discretion should not form any part of it.